Thank you, Mr. Chairman. NACC certainly is a great value. I think my family is in for a total of four
season tickets here, so we're really upping the ante for NACC. Mr. Chairman, there's a very interesting opening discussion led by Mrs. Groenewegen on homework. I would volunteer a short comment on that. I am a supporter of homework. I have been the very fortunate father to have seen my two daughters come through the Yellowknife school system for their entire 12 years very successfully. One of them is now engaged in post-secondary studies and if it wasn't for the work habits and the discipline that she was able to learn through her homework studies, that her ability to survive in a post-secondary environment would be quite diminished. So there is a very different world out there after high school and I think homework is part of getting used to it. I just put that on the record as a bit of a contrast to it.
Mr. Chairman, to general comments to the department, yes, there are many areas to this department and overall I'd say a well-run and conscientious department that really takes to heart its responsibilities here. I want to put that on the record too. The thing that I think is the most significant piece of work that lies ahead for this department is the overall review of the income security programs. Many of them, in fact a growing number of them, are falling into the bailiwick of this department, especially with the transfer of the responsibility for public housing or social housing, as some people call it. For the coming year the delivery of the service will remain with the old Housing Corporation, but even then that's going to sunset and this department will have responsibility.
Mr. Chairman, in the department's business plan and in other places we are reminded, I've almost got this memorized now, that the NWT income security system is rated as one of the best in Canada. It provides $100 million in assistance. But here's where we start to appreciate where the difficulties are.
We do this via 17 different income security programs and services that are administered through seven different government departments using four delivery systems. Mr. Chairman, the analogies are all over the place there, but we have an extremely complicated system that has obviously got issues and areas in it of duplication, of overlap, of inefficiencies, and that is just from an internal point of view. More to the point, Mr. Chairman, and as an MLA this is where I can bring my experience to the table, is that from the point of view of the client, or the customer, or the person out there, the single mother, the elder who may have a number of different social and life issues going on, trying to connect the dots between 17 different programs and seven different departments can be a daunting challenge.
So the review of our overall system is one that I really anticipate. I look forward to participating. The department has already started to go into this with the survey, a territory-wide survey that I participated in. I understand many other northerners did. Maybe this is where I'll stop now, Mr. Chairman, to ask my question. That is, related to this income security review, what was the nature or the success of this survey and the response that you've gotten so far from it? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.